Lightning reconciliation between the White House and King Salman: the new American President, just about elected, flew to Riyadh with the firm intention of repairing the damages committed by eight years of the Obama administration – only very slightly inclined to still support the Saudi theocracy that finances Islamist terror. A reconciliation concluded through impressive armament deals.

Supplying Saudi Arabia with weapons, at a moment when tensions are dangerously intensifying with its Iranian neighbour, will have been Donald Trump’s first priority. It seems that the question of human rights, of sword beheadings and of public flagellations was not brought up…

Some weeks beforehand, the butcher of Cairo was welcomed with all pomp and circumstance at the White House; nothing to be ashamed about, apparently, to flatter Abdel Fatah al-Sissi in such a way, the “President-Marshal”, who put an end to the Egyptian revolution, who overthrew the nascent democracy, filled the prisons up to the brim and adopted mass torture as a warrant of social and political peace.

Similarly, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was given all honours of the oval office. He will not leave the NATO, finally; but he expects from his sovereign to concede a few requests that would enable him to install a personal dictatorship in Ankara. Trump does not say no.